After the flapping, squawking, Carry On-style imbroglio of ITV's stewardship of England's bid – not, perhaps to win, but simply to exist without humiliation – at the World Cup, it fell to the BBC to curate the return to a brittle and ultimately fevered respectability. For the viewing hordes this was the first England game to fall outside the prime time hysteria of a Friday or Saturday night; and there was something comforting in this return to the quotidian, from the opening shots of Gary Lineker against a corporate-brochure Cape Town backdrop inside the BBC's strangely low-key African retreat, a studio that resembles the interior of a shi-shi suburban restaurant of the early 1990s, the kind of place that might affect a leather-quilted toilet seat.

Around the giant strobe-lit coffee table we were treated to an elite triangulation of senior punditry. Alan Hansen remains the heart of the BBC's coverage. No longer the rakish, vampiric presence of his early days, Hansen now seems desiccated, a gorgeously ruined husk. I'm not sure if he's even very interesting, but he is hugely constant and essential, like some immovable piece of austere parental furniture.

The standard pre-match time-waste was more elegantly handled than ITV's confusing rag-bag of fripperies. First up was Roy Hodgson pitch-side. Hodgson has proved to be the best pundit on either channel, relentlessly insightful and always courtly in his honourable 1960s East End bank robber-style brogue. Here he was the only person to call correctly England's formation, firm in the face of the BBC's insistence on some kind of diamond malarkey. The sole wrong turn came with an appearance by the great steaming Shakespeare-spouting ham that is Brian Blessed, a man who has if not the most annoying voice of all time, then certainly the most annoying voice yet.

Mercifully we were soon in the hands of the incumbent commentary A-lister Guy Mowbray, and hearing him shout "Jermain Defoe scores. England have the breakthrough they so desperately need!" in his special deep Important Moment Voice. There is no doubt BBC commentators no longer have the egomaniacal zeal of the John Motson-Barry Davies era. Motson lost his way the moment he became "John Motson", a self propelling personal brand. You feel Mowbray will never become "Guy Mowbray". He is simply a guy, although he did yell "Into pants when and where it most matters: Jermain Defoe!" which sounded like an admiring commentary on the Spurs man's disco-centred off-field exploits (but may in fact have been something about "pouncing").

Mowbray was squired by Mark Lawrenson, who gets more appealingly louche as he eases into a joke-free late period. Their double act is promisingly waspish. "It's called tackling Guy," Lawrenson pouted. "Oh, I'm with you." "I've noticed," came the weary reply.

Half-time was almost surreally upbeat, and perhaps even a career watershed for Alan Shearer, fidgety pre-game in crisply pressed hospital porter tunic. Shearer has previously settled into a hectoring style, coming on like the relentlessly badgering mouthpiece for some disgruntled local residents' association. "They're passing with purpose, they're passing with pace," he riffed here, and he seemed unexpectedly happy, bathed in the tangerine glow of late afternoon sun.

Still, things remained fraught and as the game wore on we were treated to increasingly frazzled close-ups of the England players, faces gnarled and mealy, drained of their usual romping, thoroughbred sheen. It was a little disturbing and you wonder if there isn't a case for pre-watershed facial pixelation during tight passages of play.

"Three minutes!" Mowbray bawled as the added time board was hoist. And for a while at the final whistle it all went slightly squiffy. "The shackles were off!" Gabby Logan yelped, having collared a wild-looking Fabio Capello. "Eh?" he snarled, wandering off. "They looked happier, they looked energised," Shearer beamed, leonine with kindly glee. The BBC have England again on Sunday – and it kind of feels right.